4.16.2010

217: Its a Love Hate Thing.




My brain fucking hurts and I just ate a whole bag of licorice. Some days that is how things go. You know the ones, where everything seems to be going along so well, you are about to take a European Busman's Holiday. And Bam! Like an untimely Volcano erupting, your head explodes. However, I'm not going to let this just up and turn into one of "those days." Too easy, and I have my eye on you brain hurt. And besides, the world looks like it is about to come to an end anyway, what kind of problems could I really have?

Ok, I do have one. I can hear people having sex down the hall. And not the kind of sex that makes you sort of cock your head and listen a little longer than you should. Also not the kind of sex that would make you stop in the hallway of the hotel and tense up and listen. This sounds like grunting, sweaty, traveling salesman sex. Which I am guessing it is.

I love New York City, Oh yeah, New York City. Andrew W.K. could not have been more right. The town is easy to love and easy to get really annoyed with really quickly. That must be what happens when you jam that many people onto an island and hope for the best? You get the crazies along with the not so crazies.


Signature Cycles let me borrow an Ellium Race. Nice little bike there. And when I say little, I do mean little, it was smaller than what I am used to riding, but it gave me the chance to think about fit a little more than usual. Molly, Zac (CBS) and I discussed quite a bit of fit questions a couple weeks ago in Seattle and it was fun to think about them in the context of another bike. Or were we discussing the newest Bounce Society video? Can't remember.

And Paul Levine, from Signature is one of the guys who has pioneered, or at the very least, greatly helped advance the conversation of fit in the bicycle arena, so it is always good to hang around there, have a look and listen to what is going on. Grant showed me one of the most mind blowing commuter bicycles I have ever seen.


And these are all the reasons why I love visiting New York City. Even though I feel a bit more comfortable in a town like Boston, it is still a little tame when it comes to the drama. Maybe there is not a great enough mixture of things in Boston. Wheras in NYC it is not uncommon to talk to people about Bicycle Fit one minute and the next find yourself awoken in the middle of the night to the sound of a woman screaming bloody murder. And I am not talking about funny bloody murder, I am talking about someone by themselves screaming at the top of their lungs. A wild beast with no friends to impress. Only sadness and rage to expel. I covered myself with my blanket and tried not to think of a Medusa head floating outside the door to my room.

And then, juxtapose (not the magazine Lance) that with being up at 5:00 am to ride around town with a bunch of skinnier-than-thou professional cyclists from England and you might start to see what I am talking about. It was great to ride through Central Park (never done that before) and ride up next to James Nord along the way. I had seen his tumblr through Velogogo, which is one that I like very much. And then when you are riding along next to someone and look over and go No shit, that's the guy that geeks out on bikes via the interwebs like myself. We talked for a little bit about those same interwebs and also about just how fucking skinny the ankles of all the Rapha Condor Sharp guys really are. Like it makes you feel kind of pervy and weird to not only look at them, but comment on them as well, but still it was really funny..


Dan Sharp and I are officially on the road with this trip. You can see some of our adventures over on the Rapha Blog. And Damn if he doesn't Hot It Up with the Camera these days. We have been getting each other pumped and stoked and all that neat stuff that you do on the West Coast for weeks. But now that Mount Vesuvius Part 2: The Reckoning is taking place, that might not actually be the case. Our flight over to see Fleche Wallone has officially been canceled until further notice.

Maybe some other sort of trip is in the works if that will not work out? East Coast Bike Tour? I mean I was really hoping for the sunny shores of Belgium, so what would be second on that list? Seriously, ideas? I thought about saying, you know what, I'm going to wait, I'm going to wait a bit and then go to the tour or something to that effect, but then I realized, I do not want to see the Tour. But I do want to see Fleche Wallone and LBL. (ok, I do want to see the Tour as well...damn, it is such a hard line to walk - enthusiasm is)


PS - whomever sent over the below photo is awesome. I could not put the whole thing up because it is owned and shot by my hero Terry Richardson, but you can look at the whole thing HERE. And you should. Over and Over and Over again. The other Fabs. What a guy.